peless,
she stooped down again, and her fingers touched Valmond's cold hands.

They ran up his breast, to his neck, to his face, and fondled it, as
only life can fondle death, out of that pitiful hunger which never can
be satisfied in this world; then they moved with an infinite tenderness
to his eyes, now blind like hers, and lingered there in the kinship of
eternal loss.

A low, anguished cry broke from her: "Valmond--my love!" and she fell
forward upon the breast of her lost Napoleon.

When the people gathered again in the little church upon the hill,
Valmond and his adventure had become almost a legend, so soon are men
and events lost in the distance of death and ruin.

The Cure preached, as he had always done, with a simple, practical
solicitude; but towards the end of his brief sermon he paused, and, with
a serious tenderness of voice, said:

"My children, vanity is the bane of mankind; it destroys as many souls
as self-sacrifice saves. It is the constant temptation of the human
heart. I have ever warned you against it, as I myself have prayed to
be kept from its devices--alas! how futilely at times. Vanity leads to
imposture, and imposture to the wronging of others. But if a man repent,
and yield all he has, to pay the high price of his bitter mistake,
he may thereby redeem himself even in this world. If he give his life
repenting, and if the giving stays the evil he might have wrought, shall
we be less merciful than God?

"My children" (he did not mention Valmond's name), "his last act was
manly; his death was pious; his sin was forgiven. Those rifle bullets
that brought him down let out all the evil in his blood.

"We, my people, have been delivered from a grave error. Forgetting--save
for our souls' welfare--the misery of this vanity which led us astray,
let us remember with gladness all of him that was commendable in our
eyes: his kindness, eloquence, generous heart, courage, and love of
Mother Church. He lies in our graveyard; he is ours; and, being ours,
let us protect his memory, as though he had not sought us a stranger,
but was of us: of our homes, as of our love, and of our sorrow.

"And so atoning for our sins, as did he, may we at last come to the
perfect pardon, and to peace everlasting."

EPILOGUE

I

(EXTRACT FROM A LETTER WRITTEN BY MADAME CHALICE TO MONSIEUR PADRE, CURE
OF THE PARISH OF PONTIAC, THREE MONTHS AFTER VALMOND'S DEATH.)

"... And here, dear Cure, you shall have my